As the amount of information that is collected and used by individuals, organizations and other entities has grown, the use of data storage systems has correspondingly increased. Despite the availability of increasing amounts of storage capacity, it is nonetheless desirable at times to avoid storing multiple copies of identical information. Existing systems for reducing duplicative data storage have various problems, however, and in at least some situations involve using a large number of data storage locations on one or more storage devices to retrieve a single group of data, resulting in a high number of seek operations for such data retrieval.